The Only Good Indians

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I managed to avoid any reviews that betrayed the plot of this one, and was rewarded with such a fierce, propulsive, unsettling read that I’m not about to spoil it for you. Just know this: Stephen Graham Jones’s latest novel is definitively not for the squeamish, and every bit of buzz swirling around it is warranted. Recommended By Tove H., Powells.com

Not for the squeamish — this story starts with a rush and rarely lets up. Along with the horror, though, comes a heartbreaking, eye-opening look at the consequences of the tectonic stresses building and releasing at the borders between the Indigenous and white cultures.  Recommended By Warren B., Powells.com

The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange's There, There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition, written by the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Four American Indian men from the Blackfeet Nation — friends since childhood--find themselves in a desperate struggle for their lives against an entity that wants to exact revenge upon them for what they did during an elk hunt ten years earlier.

American Indian author Jones utilizes the tropes of the horror genre to explore the class and cultural struggles of these Blackfeet men, reframing a critique of 21st century American culture.

Horror has taken on a wonderful new nuance as it explores the class and cultural struggles within our country, and many nations in the world, in a visceral and immediate way. Films like Jordan Peele's Get Out and Us, Joe Hill's #1 New York Times bestseller, The Fireman, and Victor LaValle's The Changeling, which was awarded nearly everything last year, are recent examples.

"Stephen Graham Jones is a literary master who happens to write horror, and you've never read a book quite like The Only Good Indians." Tananarive Due, National Book Award winner, author of The Good House

"The Only Good Indians is equal parts revenge thriller, monster movie, and meditation on the inescapable undertow of the past. A gripping, deeply unsettling novel." Carmen Maria Machado, National Book Award finalist and Guggenheim Fellow and author of Her Body and Other Parties

"Fans of Stephen King's It and Peter Straub's Ghost Story should find plenty to love in this tale of friends who are haunted by a supernatural entity they first encountered in their youth." Silvia Moreno-Garcia, bestselling author of Mexican Gothic

"The Only Good Indians is scary good. Stephen Graham Jones is one of our most talented and prolific living writers. The book is full of humor and bone chilling images. It's got love and revenge, blood and basketball. More than I could have asked for in a novel. It also both reveals and subverts ideas about contemporary Native life and identity. Novels can do so much to render actual and possible lives lived. Stephen Graham Jones truly knows how to do this, and how to move us through a story at breakneck (literally) speed. I'll never see an elk or hunting, or what a horror novel can do the same way again." Tommy Orange, author of There, There

"The Only Good Indians mauled me. I like stories where nobody escapes their pasts because it's what I fear most. Everyone's worst deed, if they're somewhat decent, is usually always there looming in their peripheries. What Stephen Graham Jones does for me, is create new possibilities for Indigenous story-makers." Terese Marie Mailhot, New York Times bestselling author of Heart Berries

"The Only Good Indians is a masterpiece. Intimate, devastating, brutal, terrifying, yet warm and heartbreaking in the best way, Stephen Graham Jones has written a horror novel about injustice and, ultimately, about hope...And it gives me hope that this book exists and is now in your hands." Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World

"Bloody and brutal at times, but also intimate, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful." Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author of Trail of Lightning

"An emotional depth that staggers, built on guilt, identity, one's place in the world, what's right and what's wrong." Josh Malerman, New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box and A House at the Bottom of a Lake.

"A heartbreakingly beautiful story about hope and survival, grappling with themes of cultural identity, family, and traditions." Library Journal (Starred Review)

"This novel works both as a terrifying chiller and as biting commentary on the existential crisis of indigenous peoples adapting to a culture that is bent on eradicating theirs." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Jones has proven his horror mettle, but his latest novel steers the genre into some unexpected territory....very impactful. A solid tale about a community that hasn't often received serious treatment in the horror genre." Booklist

Stephen Graham Jones has been an NEA fellowship recipient, has won the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, a Bram Stoker Award, four This is Horror Awards; and has been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.